As a libertarian and refugee from the authoritarian Roman Catholic church of my youth, I simply do not understand the drift of my party toward a soulless collectivism. This is in fact what Sarah Palin hit on in her shocking image of a "death panel" under Obamacare that would make irrevocable decisions about the disabled and elderly. When I first saw that phrase, headlined on the Drudge Report, I burst out laughing. It seemed so over the top! But on reflection, I realized that Palin's shrewdly timed metaphor spoke directly to the electorate's unease with the prospect of shadowy, unelected government figures controlling our lives. A death panel not only has the power of life and death but is itself a symptom of a Kafkaesque brave new world where authority has become remote, arbitrary and spectral. And as in the Spanish Inquisition, dissidence is heresy, persecuted and punished.

I only read the Instapundit excerpt (I like to savor her writing over lunch or dinner) so far, and was pretty surprised by how suddenly everyone on the "tastemaker" end of the media boulevard is changing their tune about the clown car group we've recently put into power. Ed Koch was another one that comes to mind; he was pretty high on Barry & co. a short while ago.

Like Ms. Paglia, I find the condescension of these politicians' respond-in-generalities M.O. to be really tough to swallow. It's their job to know the details and what the hell is in the legislation they're sponsoring/supporting. And yet, turn to the big media talking heads and everyone else is in the wrong for deigning to ask pointed questions.

Losers, all.

word verification: the flatulent-sounding "phypel", which describes what's been coming out of our "leaders'" mouths of late ("Hey, did you hear Obama yesterday talking about health care? Man, what a phypel; I could practically smell it through the tv set!")

Socialism is an invincible religious belief. It rejects discussion, for the truth has been revealed. Historical failures do not beg their caution, but demand yet another attempt. Naysayers are, at a minimum, misinformed, but are more likely evil heretics.

Once you understand that socialists are true believers and not political pragmatists, the actions Paglia bemoans are easily explained.

Theirs is the one true faith; they will have no other gods before them. Liberty, for example, is a graven image, and one of the worst of this religion's many devils.

Obama's not stupid enough to believe that national healthcare would actually save money, but he thinks we're stupid enough to believe it.

Yet somehow the rest of the developed world manages to provide health care to their entire population at a lower cost (by a considerable margin) with equal or often better results by any objective standard while the U.S. struggles to provide health care to 85% or so of its population while spending 1/3 more of its GDP than the next highest spending country.

Even though I had already read this article, when I started reading Althouse's post I thought for sure the author must be Rush. That Obama is making his supports sound like Rush in their criticism of his own policies speaks volumes on his abilities as President.

Paglia isn't an Obama supporter. She is mixed up old relic with a rapidly declining mind who's nonsense would never see the light of day if it weren't contrarian in nature. In other words, she isn't smart enough to run with the crowd she says she is part of.

The trouble with arbitrary decisions like that is there is yet another massive opening for corruption. When private firms are corrupted there is resort to the legal system and to the government. When the government itself is the corrupted one, there is no appeal, except to the corruption. Which always leads to political privileging to gain yet more power.

If we were in a situation where political corruption seemed at a low ebb, and there was constant and serious and non-partisan reaction against it I would be much more open to more government involvement in health care. But now? With these people in charge? With both sides of the aisle showing brazen favoritism for favored contributors? No way to more government involvement. Not this government. Not even considered until this government shows it takes seriously the inherent problems of government control.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. When Boxer gets worn out, he gets shipped off to the glue farm, while the acceptable pigs eat all the best portions from the trough.

Yet somehow the rest of the developed world manages to provide health care to their entire population at a lower cost...

Wow, so socialism really works better than freedom. OK why would we want to stop at health care? It's not even the most important thing - food, water, clothing, and shelter are more important than health care because you will die immediately without them. So clearly if we can't trust the private sector to provide health care we can't trust it to provide any of the more important necessities. And since, according to Freder, socialism is more effective and efficient than freedom, clearly we need the government to take over food production and distribution, housing production, clothing design and production, and so on. I mean look at the stellar job the government is doing educating the students in the government schools! Why wouldn't we want them to run ALL aspects of our lives if they do it cheaper and better than free people would?

After all, the socialist governments of Europe have released official statistics that PROVE that socialist governments do things better than free people. I guess the argument is over, huh?

Yet somehow the rest of the developed world manages to provide health care to their entire population at a lower cost (by a considerable margin) with equal or often better results by any objective standard while the U.S. struggles to provide health care to 85% or so of its population while spending 1/3 more of its GDP than the next highest spending country.

Run those numbers again -- on a PPP adjusted basis, the US government (and state governments) already spend as much on health care per capita as Japan, through Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP. The government already has the money, if we really want to try for cost-effective universal coverage. The problem is the effort to bring down costs is going to screw some people over (mostly patients), and, uh, they have the right to vote.

Yet somehow the rest of the developed world manages to provide health care to their entire population at a lower cost (by a considerable margin) with equal or often better results by any objective standard while the U.S. struggles to provide health care to 85% or so of its population while spending 1/3 more of its GDP than the next highest spending country.

What if we stopped subsidizing Europe's pharmaceutical research and military protection? What if they had to bear the FULL costs of everything like we do? Would their health care % of GDP still be lower then ours?

Paglia isn't an Obama supporter. She is mixed up old relic with a rapidly declining mind who's nonsense would never see the light of day if it weren't contrarian in nature. In other words, she isn't smart enough to run with the crowd she says she is part of.

So the moment a big liberal like Paglia stops supporting Obama, she gets thrown under the bus by garage. I tell you his type are truly scary, they are the ultimate extremists who will be in charge of the "purging squads". In a more evil reality, garage would be executing "traitors to the cause" day and night in some dark dungeon.

Absolute viciousness. The first time I read a CP article was on abortion where she opined that, while she was still pro-choice at heart, she felt the pro-life movement had a more sophisticated and mature argument. Her claim that the pro-choice's argument was all based on selfishness met outright vitriol from her commentators.

She always seems to give both sides even keel, but as she appears to be a liberal going of the reservation, she seems to invite incredible vicious attacks.

Obama is trying to blitzkrieg the legislature, same as he did with the greased lightning (the grease came from all the pork) of his bailout. His MO is to hit with enormous tracts (the current one is over a thousand pages) and then he tries to ram it through before the ink has dried and before anyone has read it. He's got a majority and is using it to advance his national socialist policies as far as he can go, counting on the media to whitewash his actions, as he rolls over America like a giant paint-roller, smashing all dissent, as he goes to affect his "change."

Hitler used the same tactics. They called it blitzkrieg, or lightning war. Obama is really good at this, and it's going to be close to impossible to stop him. Maybe the best we can do is hope that he gets stalled in the winter, until a counterattack can be mounted, and at least some of us can read his latest blitzkrieg attack on American institutions.

When you factor out US homicides and accidents the differences are statistically insignificant.

So we spend a third more and cover 15% less of our population to get statistically insignificant different results. Just brilliant!

Besides, who decided that homicides and accidents are not public health issues? Aren't people who die in accidents or from homicide just as dead, and aren't those deaths just as--if not more--preventable--as those who die from heart attacks or cancer?

Besides, who decided that homicides and accidents are not public health issues? Aren't people who die in accidents or from homicide just as dead, and aren't those deaths just as--if not more--preventable--as those who die from heart attacks or cancer?

Moron - what does health care have to do with gang bangers murdering each other?

Freder's statements are true. We DO spend more to deliver care to 85% of the population than any other country, etc.

The problem with the "every other developed country does it" argument is that the U.S. is NOT every other developed country. We are unique in our combination of physical size and large population. We span a continent larger than Europe, with a population nearly as large. There is NO other country on the face of the Earth remotely comparable to our unique combination of attributes. To compare us to France, Germany, Japan, Canada, etc., is not to compare apples to oranges. It is to compare a grape to a watermelon.

Europe has a patchwork of very different medical care systems. Several of them, such as my favorite, the French, are worthy of study and analysis in terms of what they may offer us. But in United States terms, the French system, for example, would be a health care system for the State of California. Not a bad idea in itself (good luck getting anything done in dysfunctional California these days), but NOT necessarily a template for a national system.

Even the European Union has not seriously attempted to rationalize health care across the Continent. Health care is recognized as a universal right, but in Europe there is no universal system, only a collection of national systems, some rather decentralized, such as the German. I expect further cross-border harmonization to occur, but no one expects or wants a totally new, built from scratch health system for all of Europe. And no one in their right mind would want to legislate it in three weeks.

We need to do what is right for the United States of America, not the mythical "rest of the developed world." I agree SOMETHING has to be done, because of the many ills Freder points to. But I agree with Paglia that the current proposals are an absurd, incomprehensible mess.

I accept a number of things on faith. A lot of people do. This just shouldn't be one of them.

Anyone who pays attention can see the basic premise of the health care plan in general is. A) To add another option to the table that is less expensive B) Stop insurance companies from descriminating based on preexising conditions.

What exactly the plan will be is being hammered out. And how it affects the medical establishment, Big Pharma and Insurance companies is to be seen.

The problem is the GOP and Republcans don't believe any of it and they think we are becoming a communist country with death panels. It's absurd. it is especially absurd because Insurance companies right now today will not cover people with pre-existing conditions therefore creating it's own 'panel' that leads to financial ruin and possibly death.Obama's plan is to replace Insurance company decisions with that of doctors who are in a position to know better because they are not thinking of the bottom line.

Did you skip a sentence?Does the question have anything to do with your statement or mine?

Absolutely it does. You pick one statistic from the country with what is widely recognized as having the worst health care system (and also chooses to spend the least on health care) in all of Europe to condemn "socialized medicine" as though it is indicative of health care in all of Europe. Of course it is not. As a matter of fact and statistics, the U.S. by any subjective measure does a mediocre job in health care (i.e., it is in the middle of the pack when compared against countries of similar wealth). Yet it spends more of its GDP (17%+) on health care than the next closest country (France at about 11%) with apparently absolutely nothing to show for it.

You get today's first prize for glibness (glibocity? glibnicious?) by boiling down the entire affair into to 2 points that are dubious at best.

I'm all for the federal government stepping in and expanding Medicare to cover those not picked up do to pre-existing conditions. As long as it also allows national competition between health care companies and includes both tort reform and a panel review to weed out frivolous lawsuites. Both of those things will drive the cost down and will cost a drip in the bucket to just TRY compared to what Obama is pushing.

Why not take a measured approach and try these things before running higgildy-piggildy (thank you Bloom County) into this morass of unintended consequences? There are supporters of those measures on both sides of the isle, but the Democratic leadership in both chambers won't let them out of committee. How does that strike you for "democratic"?

WV "yinest" - definition: adv. to have or possess the most yin in a given group. See yangest.

Matt - for a stupid twitt, she sounds smarter than you. You hammer out the detaisl of exactly the plan will be before you vote on it so everyone knows what they're voting for.

Obama's plan is to replace Insurance company decisions with that of doctors who are in a position to know better because they are not thinking of the bottom line. Oh, wonderful. You left out the part where politically influenced government bureaucrats replace the insurance companies.

More Paglia - You can keep your doctor; you can keep your insurance, if you're happy with it, Obama keeps assuring us in soothing, lullaby tones. Oh, really? And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards for ruling on my access to tests and specialists? And what if my insurance company goes belly up because of undercutting by its government-bankrolled competitor? Face it: Virtually all nationalized health systems, neither nourished nor updated by profit-driven private investment, eventually lead to rationing.

"You pick one statistic from the country with what is widely recognized as having the worst health care system (and also chooses to spend the least on health care) in all of Europe to condemn "socialized medicine" as though it is indicative of health care in all of Europe."

No.I picked a major statistic regarding diseases people care about that demonstrates your statement ("the developed world manages to provide health care to their entire population at a lower cost (by a considerable margin) with equal or often better results") to be the utter bullshit.

"Please, and when you go, take the rest of the former Confederacy with you."

There may in fact be nowhere to go where liberty is held as highly as it was with our founders. At least not until, like all other socialist attempts in human history, this experiment fails, and some new nation finds liberty worth trying.

I agree, we may be totally screwed, for generations. But people are pretty pissed off, and violence is often not far behind such sentiments.

3) Adding 40 to 50 million to those already actively participating in insured health care will lead to...?

???

It will lead to 3rd world style health care for all of us, which is exactly what the socialists want. Basically it's morally unjust that I get to have gold-plated health care and someone else doesn't even have insurance. So things must be made more "equitable" by bringing me down. I don't know what you call that, but I call it Communism.

It's a game. You have to type in a word verification in order to post. Those people are using WV to denote that the following word is the one they had to use to post, then adding a fun definition that's funny for fun's sake.

Damn those leeches and their stubborn insistence to provide for themselves!

Again, just like Pogo, statistics will prove to be the death of you. If you will check you will discover that every single state of the former Confederacy receives more Federal tax dollars back than they pay out. And that doesn't even include defense and DOE spending in those states. You will also notice a disproportionate number of military bases in the former Confederacy--including the largest Navy and Army bases in the world.

The conservative "Death Panel" argument asks us to suppose that the government won't pay for your procedure, and because the government won't pay for your procedure, they've essentially condemned you to death.

Under the current system of course, the government will not pay for the procedure. Are you following this?

Under all of these proposals, anyone can pay for the procedure themselves, just as now, either out of pocket or through private insurance.

Put another way, if the government not paying for your treatment is a death sentance, then the government death panels have already condemned us all to death, by refusing to pay for our treatment. That's a silly way to talk of course, but its the way Palin (and Althouse) are talking.

I call it central-planning socialism. Communism is the removal of nearly all private property and a different animal than socialism, in which you can own private property...sorta...in most cases...for a while...

Obama believes he can cut government expeneses on health care by denying it to your kids and grandparents.

Here's an article where Obama questions the need for a hip replacement ... for his own grandmother.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aGrKbfWkzTqc

Nut quote: "“The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health- care bill out here.”

Obama questions the care provided by you and me for his own family! How do you think he's going to decide when it's time for your mother to have a hip replacement? He questions whether he'd give his own grandmother a new hip to ease her pain.

He's sick and tired of paying the bills of the "chronically ill." He wants to give them the blue (suicide) pill.

"you will discover that every single state of the former Confederacy receives more Federal tax dollars back than they pay out."

Exactly.So why foist an even larger boondoggle on us, if you already can't keep taxation-spending fair?

"Under all of these proposals, anyone can pay for the procedure themselves, just as now, either out of pocket or through private insurance"

Bullshit.Medicare patients cannot pay out of pocket for that which is not covered. Doctors cannot offer it, if they also see Medicare patients.

What a death counselling session is meant for is to tell a patient it's time to stop doing investigatory assessments, because they are too old. That is exactly what will happen, except the easier way will be like in Medicare, by simply defunding it entirely, rather than one at a time.

@Pogo:"..What a death counselling session is meant for is to tell a patient it's time to stop doing investigatory assessments, because they are too old. That is exactly what will happen, except the easier way will be like in Medicare, by simply defunding it entirely, rather than one at a time.

Just like Canada and the UK."

Better yet, look at the Netherlands for the shape of things to come in this area.I think that is what BO has in mind.

I guess I am not understanding Paglia's view when she says:And what if my doctor is not the one appointed by the new government medical boards...

Most likely if someone has a doctor they probably have insurance already. So why would they be losing their doctor? It is only an uninsured person in this case who might lose their doctor if they choose to go with government run option. But that is they might lose them. And if anything they could now get less expensive care. It's not really a well thought out argument by Pagli because it is hypothetical.

As far as if their insurance goes belly-up well... that's capitalism. Companies come and go all the time. If one goes away then just get another. I don't see how care would be any less.

Paglia has always been a traditionalist with a classical education and a very wide world view. She was a classical liberal in her day and has enjoyed a career of telling the truth from known facts in a provacative style. Therefore she can never accept the Obama style. The method of operation for Obama and friends is first dependent upon a media control allowing him to make up fantasy facts and throw in a Crisis of opportunity that confuse voters until they acquiesce in the Smile of the harmless facist dictator offering to solve the crisis in exchange for power over us.IMO the fight for men's minds this August over nationalizing healthcare has been lost by Obama. He desparately needs a win for his sponsors. The Clinton/Soros/Internationalist axis that anointed Obama for a job has long since quit seeing Nations as relevant. They see no borders but do see Money/Credit flowing around the globe seeking cheap labor and energy supplies for a kickback. The USA has become an inconvenient obstacle to their system because we still expect American control over our own labor relations and energy supplies. Obama was their picked candidate to dilute/destroy our will to govern ourselve under a Constitutional form of government. He has failed. his only chance to beat us now is the Cap and Trade World Tax. Will Sarah Palin also be our point person in that fight for men's minds? Stay tuned.

Well which is better; an insurance company seeing that you have a pre-existing condition and deciding you cannot be covered? Or a doctor who tries to find a way to cut costs and has a patient go to one place to get all of their care versus five locations to get a, b, c, d and e done?Yes, doctors see the bottom line too but not at the cost of them making a profit or losing a profit at the expense of the patient. Insurance companies do not care about patients. They only care about profit. You know that. And it has to change.

Freder - Yet somehow the rest of the developed world manages to provide health care to their entire population at a lower cost (by a considerable margin) with equal or often better results by any objective standard while the U.S. struggles to provide health care to 85% or so of its population while spending 1/3 more of its GDP than the next highest spending country.

Leave aside "the rest of the world" for a moment - huge differences in culture and demographics ensure that importing a solution that seems to work splendidly in Sweden or Japan will have very different results here.

Let's focus on reality here in America: What Obama is proposing is to have the government provide *x* to 40 million Americans who currently do without while doing nothing to reduce the use of *x* among the rest of the population. At the same time, he'll reduce our overall national expenditures on *x* without rationing. Does this seem remotely possible or even logical?

If *x* was something else, say, vacuum cleaners or dry cleaning or something, it would seem completely absurd. But somehow, since we're talking about healthcare, all the above supposedly makes sense.

Surely even you don't believe that we can pay for all these goodies by cutting "waste and inefficiency"?

which might be slightly more populated than Hoboken-so it's a a tad less complicated for them.

What might be some of the "extra" health care "costs" to the US GDP?

Let's see some of the best research and development is done where?

Well Harvard, Princeton, they have these HUGE labs that are in existence because so far this little dirty thing called PROFIT has been allowed to fund that.

Frontier breaking discoveries that YES! the rest of the world benefits from-guys being lab rats because my gawd they might be Capitalist Pig Dogs-and the Capitalist Pig Dog Companies that contribute the funds.

Now so far Big Pharma thinks they can get away with an 80 billion bribe...but really, how long is that going to last?

And-if you happen to be 2% of the population that has some rare genetic disorder.......

Is Freder actually Cookie? They keep bringing up slavery. Why not throw in a dead Indians reference, too? You are sure up to date on your hatefulness, Freder. And you sure love you some socialism, which has only worked out well for all involved.

WV - pitsh - what you won't be able to take without permission from the gubmit once Freder rules.

Ding! Another troll. He obviously didn't read her article where she bashes GW without mercy and spouts praise on Obama's foreign trips. Paglia has dared challenge the orthodoxy, and must be thrown under the bus.

Anyone who attempts to use life expectancy or infant mortality as a metric to evaluate the quality of health care is most certainly not an epidemiologist. Until you disaggregate relevant portions of the population and compare those against similar populations you are literally comparing apples and oranges (or in this case Americans with Swedes). It is the heterogeneity problem. Epi principle: you have to compare consist numerators and denominators.

In terms of health care outcomes, where I propose the appropriate metric is five and ten year survivability following medical intervention, the Lancet Oncology Journal last August published the results of cancer rates. The US leads in recovery from Breast and prostate cancers. Finally, if you pulling your medical arguments from Google, please switch to Pub Med because Google only get 60% of the pub med literature.

"Insurance companies do not care about patients. They only care about profit."

For the love of God please, please tell me what makes you think the government gives a shit about individual citizens. I have several friends who went through the VA that will tell you otherwise. I have relatives on Medicare that will tell you otherwise.

There is no motivation whatsoever for the government to provide good service. At least at a for-profit, they have a *gasp* profit-motive. If your side would simply drop the state boundaries and let health insurance companies compete nationally for customers, the costs would plummet and there would be at least some margin of motive to take care the individual.

Neither the private sector nor the government is going to treat you like your momma, but the government is sure as hell bent for leather to try and take the job of your nanny.

Alex said... 'It will lead to 3rd world style health care .. exactly what the socialists want. .. be made more "equitable" by bringing me down .. but I call it Communism."

i LOVE it when Alex posts. So many targets. So many arrows....\ahh Alex, communism and socialism aren't the same things. why do you bring it up?do you know what the terms mean or did you just steal it off Faux Noise.

Again demonstrating that the unwashed and uninformed mind is and will alays be our greatest threat.

Well which is better; an insurance company seeing that you have a pre-existing condition and deciding you cannot be covered? ...Yes, doctors see the bottom line too but not at the cost of them making a profit or losing a profit at the expense of the patient. Insurance companies do not care about patients. They only care about profit. You know that. And it has to change.

Matt, honestly you just sound very naive to me. Doctors are going to act in their best interests. Not that they aren’t wonderful people individually (some of them at least), but they are not going to see patients just out of the goodness of their heart. Even if they wanted to (they can always dedicate some time but I mean by and large), they are subject to overhead, insurance of their own, etc... They have to make a profit too.

When the government is in charge of medicine, it will not be the doctors making the decision, it will be the government and there will be no changing insurance companies, no appeals, no higher authority. You think the government won’t make decisions based on cost? Have you been LISTENING to Obama? He is so blatant I am amazed that people are just ignoring it!

The doctors will be told what is reimbursed, and what they can be paid, etc, etc,, and they will do it. They will have no choice.

Megan McArdle, posting as Jane Galt a few years ago, pointed out the following pattern that repeats over and over:

1) Liberals/Progressives propose initiative X.2) Conservatives scream about how passing initiative X will lead to consequence Z3) Liberals/Progressives say 'No way will X lead to Z, we're not talking about Z, nobody wants Z, it will never happen, you conservative retreads are out of your mind'4) X passes.5) A few years go bye.6) Z occurs. Liberals/Progressives say that Z is reasonable and anyone who doesn't think so is a retread.

It isn't that Paglia disagrees with other liberals. You probably don't ready any liberal blogs, but they rarely agree on anything. That's their weakness: it's like herding cats. It's that Paglia makes the most patently absurd arguments, because like I say, she has nothing upstairs to argue with, therefore she has to make a mockery of herself to get noticed.

Hey, look who figured out how to type in the verification word - our own little old tax dodger hdhouse. And, as always, he types made up words in mixed up cases. He is just ever so special.

Hey hdh, what is "alays"? And you used a \ between paragraphs - why?

Ok, remember, old timer, as you were taught back in the late 1800s, you should start a sentence with an uppercase letter. Those are the big ones. Remember? I'm sure you do. Now be patient, your attendent will come by soon and change your diaper.

WV - policu - what the state will do when the commie Nazi socialists take over. And yes, hdh, Nazis were socialist, too. You love Nazis, right? Because you are one? Isn't that a good boy...

"You will also notice a disproportionate number of military bases in the former Confederacy--including the largest Navy and Army bases in the world."

A USMA grad (from Texas, incidentally) once told me that this is so as a direct result of the War of the Rebellion. Garrisons to see to it that such things didn't happen again.

I usually disagree with you, but I'm actually appalled and dismayed at your bigotry. And there's a Hell of a lot of graves containing soldiers who would look at your attitude of "fuck 'em, let 'em leave" and say "Now hold on just one damned minute!" Hating Southerners today because they held slaves 150 yrs ago is pretty idiotic. Consistency demands that you hate essentially every civilization that's ever existed.

TW: pudsquo. The status quo of the usual enlightened lefties acting like puds.

"I don't want some government death panel denying me coverage that I don't have anyway! Stay away from my medicare, socialist thugs!"

Instapundit and Althouse, two tenured professors at public universities, railing about socialism. They have no shame.

"I don't want my taxes going to uninsured people! I'd rather have my taxes pay for emergency room care for the indolent! I'd rather continue to pay higher premiums year after year and ultimately go bankrupt when my insurance company denies me coverage on the basis of some old record of mine they dug up! The status quo is awesome. Let's be sure to proactively oppose any effort at reform before knowing the details of any plan, and let people like Chuck Norris and Sarah Palin pick out innocuous elements of legislation and make them seem terribly sinister and evil, while stoking the rage of paranoid seniors terrified at whole swathes of modernity."

"pick out innocuous elements of legislation and make them seem terribly sinister and evil,"

Many of the great unwashed, those average joes you sneer at, have learned to mistrust 'innocuous legislation', for it often uses pleasant-sounding words by which to extract more money, reduce liberty, and chain our children and theirs to the whims of a faceless bureaucracy.

I'm not going to add to the flame wars or the trolling fever. Just want to make a point about the linked article: Garage says Camille is not a liberal, but the article, which is about the clusterf**k the current admin is having trying to get Obamacare passed, has as much to say about Bush (Iraq WMD lies, etc) as it does about Obama. EVERYTHING about Bush could, and should, have been left out of the article. Absolutely unnecessary, except to get in a few after-the-fight-is-over cheap shots.She's a liberal.

@garage, my point isn't that liberals march in lockstep like good little soldiers of the revolution -- though the way in which so many lefties spout identical talking points at the same time has a skeptical guy like me scratching his head a bit.

No, my point is that, as liberals used to do routinely back in the day, Ms. Paglia insists on thinking for herself. What a concept!

@garage, my point isn't that liberals march in lockstep like good little soldiers of the revolution -- though the way in which so many lefties spout identical talking points at the same time has a skeptical guy like me scratching his head a bit..

There are many criticisms from the left and right that are definitely valid. Paglia doesn't even come close. She doesn't even try, that was my beef. Oh well...

Once in a blue moon, Freder is right and the more conservative posters, still making early 1980s boasts of America's medical system as "best in the world" for "freedom-lovers loving freedom!" - are wrong.

Yet somehow the rest of the developed world manages to provide health care to their entire population at a lower cost (by a considerable margin) with equal or often better results by any objective standard while the U.S. struggles to provide health care to 85% or so of its population while spending 1/3 more of its GDP than the next highest spending country.Who is stupid again?

Some points:

1. The US spends 17% of its GDP on healthcare while France, Japan, and Switzerland spend 10, 9, and 11.4% - respectively. The three also lead the world in long lifespan. All while 45 million Americans are uninsured, another 70 million have insurance far inferior to France or Japan's plans.

2. The "US is too big, gigantic with a different culture to ever successfully adopt what any other country does!!" argument was not made with our emulating the German autobahn system or English industrial system.

3. America is resource constrained, just like any other country. In the future, because our technlogical edge is destroyed and the dollar as King about to be - even more so. Arguments that "RATIONING!" is unacceptable and "Victims and Victim Families" have a right to demand unlimited resources...or that only the wealthy should on the other side...are now pretty well discredited. By the reality that rationing is already a fact in most employer plans, and by a consensus that even the indigent deserve some minimal level of care that government must do because private charities gradually failed in the task..

4. The medical and business community now have a majority consensus that our present path on Medicare, employer health plans is uncompetitive, and unsustainable from a financial standpoint.

5. Research has shown the per capita rate of pharmceutical and medical technology innovation is equal to or even better than the rate of innovation in certain other highly advanced nations than in the US. All nations with universal health care.Israel, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Switzerland, and France all exceed the US rate of medical advances.Arguing that heathcare reform will "ruin the profit motive to find the cure for cancer" is fatuous. Also the mistaken belief that biotech entrepreneurs and Big Pharma teams "innovate from scratch with pure laissez faire capitalism driving it all." No, most drugs come from basic research funded by government and non-profit foundations. Most big medical technology advances also come from university systems which then peel off professors to make money for themselves and their schools making a commercial product or by profs bolting from the schools...

Somehow people have lost the concept of what insurance is as compared to health CARE. Of course if you have a pre existing condition, and are therefore much more likely to use the insurance, the company is going to compensate themselves for taking a bigger risk by charging you more. The property insurer will charge you more if your house is in a high fire area with a shake roof and no cleared defensible space around you. The auto company will charge you more if you have multiple wrecks or live in a high crime/high auto theft area. This concept is not new. Why should it be vacated for health insurance.

Insurance is to spread the risk over a pool of insured. Some people will cost the insurance company money because they actually have claims and many more will not have claims and be a money maker for the insurance company

When the Government proposes forcing EVERYONE, including the uninsurable risks, to either be insured or pay a big fine and still be insured there is no doubt that the risk of paying claims is now on the shoulders of the tax payer who has no freaking choice in the matter.

We are looking at rationing and substandard care.

When people say you can keep your insurance they are either liars or just plain stupid. If your employer decided that he wanted to go to the CHEAPER alternative of just paying 8% of payroll and drops the group coverage....YOU are screwed and you know it.

Also in the bill are provisions that make smart coverage like HSA High Deductible/Catastrophic coverage plans illegal. If you don't have a "qualified" plan (not an HSA type) or the government plan, when you file your taxes the IRS will take any refunds you may have to pay for coverage and PUT you on the government option and if you owe taxes....well you just owe some more. The IRS is going to be the enforcer. They Government will also have the right to go directly into your bank account and take out money. Cash will be king.

They WANT us to all be on the government plan so they can get money from us, reduce coverage and basically kill off the older people and cut back on Social Security payments as well. Win win for the Gov....lose lose and really fucked for the rest of us.

Anyone who attempts to use life expectancy or infant mortality as a metric to evaluate the quality of health care is most certainly not an epidemiologist. Until you disaggregate relevant portions of the population and compare those against similar populations you are literally comparing apples and oranges (or in this case Americans with Swedes). It is the heterogeneity problem. Epi principle: you have to compare consist numerators and denominators.

In terms of health care outcomes, where I propose the appropriate metric is five and ten year survivability following medical intervention, the Lancet Oncology Journal last August published the results of cancer rates. The US leads in recovery from Breast and prostate cancers. Finally, if you pulling your medical arguments from Google, please switch to Pub Med because Google only get 60% of the pub med literature.

C4 - If "the healthcare system" is what determines life expectancy, then why the huge disparities within the US?

For example, life expectancy in Hawaii is 80.1 vs. 73.6 in Mississippi, yet both share the same "flawed" American healthcare system. What might account for this difference, other than the healthcare system?

LE Lee expects to be able to post racial hatred here and not get any pushback. He suspects that no one who is white can be as learned as he, nor his equal in intellectual ability - a true definition of a racist.

So he smugly uses racially inflammatory rhetoric to castigate an entire group of people and thinks we should just shuffle along, thank him for his largese, then stay quiet.

He cannot answer substantive questions about socialism and communism, first, because he has never thought about those systems in a critical way, and second, because he has never worked in a capitalist setting. He is a product of an education that taught him to hate white people, profit and individualism. He is too stupid to think his way out of his personal quagmire, even if he wanted to.

When you say socialism most likely you are clumping it in with communism and stalinsm and complete tyrannical control by the government.So let's start with what we mean rather than just calling something by some label.Note that socialism is an economic system that for the most part opposes capitalism.I'm a Liberal Democrat but I support capitalism as do every Liberal I know. However we lean toward what might be called a social democracy in which some things [post office, social security, medicare, libraries, fire departments etc] are run by the government. But this does not mean totally scrapping the capitalistic system for socialism. Nor does it mean there cannot be competition.Understand that.Same for health care. Some do want to go with a Single Payer plan. Some do not. The bottom line is to make health care affordable for everyone. I don't think that is a bad goal. The free market system has been unable to do that with health care - and so far as I can tell costs just keep sky rocketing.

I dislike racism in all its forms. You are a hateful person who spews racially charged garbage on here too often. You really should be ashamed, but as a liberal, you don't know the meaning of the word shame. Or a lot of other words, apparently.

Tell us the name of your business so we can organize a boycott - white people should not spend money at a place where they are so hated.

If, for the sake of argument, the free market has failed "to make health care affordable for everyone", and therefore you assume that the government is a more efficient way to organize that part of the economy, why stop there?

There are many criticisms from the left and right that are definitely valid. Paglia doesn't even come close.

Now you've really got me scratching my poor, balding head, garage. Everything Paglia wrote is perfectly valid. Maybe you need to read what she wrote again, and this time with an open mind.

My take on you is this. You are in one of the saddest situations a parent can be in, with a child that has a chronic illness, you have expenses that are not covered by your insurance, and consequently you experience expenses that strain the family budget. I've been there myself, and my son is lucky to have survived to adulthood. But how can you possibly believe that a government-run program will make things better? Trust me, if HR 3200 becomes the law of the land things will swiftly become worse for you and your family.

Will most people (e.g.me) have better insurance if Obama's plan gets approved? Will taking the profit motive out of medicine decrease the possibility of innovation in drugs and treatments? Why is not possible to introduce the Obama plan to just one state or region first in order to evaluate how well it works? .....My wv is loseriu. My wv lacks latent content. I am ashamed of such obvious symbolism.

The system does need to be changed: especially the malpractice lawsuits need a cap because there's going to be SOME error. It doesn't mean the whole system has to be destroyed just because there is error.

But he also needs to confess that he's added the illegals to the enrollees, and that he's going to decide who gets paid what, and so on.

He has to give us a chance to think about this mess, and not just roll over us with every last notion.

He needs to deal with everybody's fears, and he needs to be out front with why he added 20 million to 40 million illegal aliens to what we have to pay out for.

why doesn't he at least tell everybody he's doing that, and ask if it's ok? and say why he thinks it's ok to ask us to pick up the tab for that lot that isn't even supposed to be here?

Well it's a noble goal , but some of us have been around government run health care for decades....

When you lose some of the incentives for good performance it gets in a perpetual motion of triage.

When you get that happening you get mediocrity,or worse substandard care.

My experience the one time they forced me to be hospitalized and thank gawd I wasn't really sick-

Six to a room.

A visitor that was allowed in the room at 1:00 am.

Toilet paper run out of constantly and having to be fetched.

One toilet, blood all over it and the floor.

Ran out of this stuff I was suppose to dress my own wound with-provided after a four hour wait.

Walked down the hall to find the public restroom without blood all over it, told I was violating regulations.

No towels. Waited for towels till 1:00 in the afternoon by elevator, finally threatened to use the curtains in the room-because I had spent sixteen hours in a fevered sweat and wanted to shower kind of desperately-

1. You cannot treat accidents and illness the same because the US - besides being too big ever adopt superior technology or systems from other countries - is also too diverse!

2. That if we ever adopted "socialized medicine" our hero doctors and nurses would leave in droves. Not enough hospital beds would exist!!

3. The Democrats are idiots and will mess this all up.

Answer to #1 - Lifestyle differences explain part of the failure to have as healthy an American population as exists in certain Asian and European nations. But we also know that dramatically shorter lifespans are seen in populations that have no or grossly inadequate health insurance plans compared to those of the same lifestyle with good coverage. Researchers say this disparity in the main driver to shorter oveall USA lifespans despite our paying 50% more per capita than any other nation.

Answer to #2 - We already have less nurses, doctors, and hospital beds than most advanced nations. We rank 52nd in doctors, 33 in number of nurses of 110 advanced nations. The OCED says the mean is 3.7 hospital beds, 3.1 doctors, and 9.2 nurses per 1,000 people. America has 2.9 hospital beds, 2.4 doctors, and 7.9 nurses per 1,000 people.And it would be far worse stats if 25% of our doctors were not foreigners, 16% of nurses.

Even with certain Asian nations below us in doctors to population ratios, like Japan and S Korea - we find they have categories of trained people - paid less than doctors but leveraging the system - doing what only doctors are permitted to do in the USA. Nurse practitioners and medic technicians authorized to dispense medicine, perform minor surgical procedures, operate advanced equipment under a doctors general awareness and supervision.

Answer to #3 - Yes, the Dems are showing positive signs of messing this up. But what we get each time Republicans are in office are proclaimations that the US Healthcare system is the best in the world with absolutely no change warranted as it would be an assault on capitalism and "freedom-loving", that Big Pharma are wonderworkers needing more profits, higher drug prices to stimulate their "Cure production".

Hard to fight and claim a "better Republican plan exists" when each time the Republicans are in charge they abandon any pretense of reform that would alienate the AMA, Big Pharma, insurance companies making a mint off healthcare premiums, for-profit healthcare cabals and nursing home owners...

Just because we have issues with some aspects of capitalism does not mean we want to scrap the whole enterprise. Why the heck would we? There are good things about capitalism and the free market [although I would argue our free market is not really free].

Are you unable to see that right now the US has many social programs that do not actually interfere with capitalism? Or more importantly that capitalism and the government can [and do] work side by side.Why must you think people must choose 100% of one or 100% of the other? That is not viable for the US and has never been.There are good things and bad things in capitalism and there are good things and bad things in government. Both are run by people. People are both good and bad.

And not to be maudlin but when I was fifteen I watched my Grandmother die up in Canada, just recently I watched someone close to the family in Arizona die.

Now granted I was only fifteen when my Grandmother died up in Canada but the thing that is nagging the hell out of me and it might be for a variety of other reasons but with the current argument I am remembering one hell of a difference-

up in Canada there was not a lot of discussion from the doctors that went-

"Here are your choices we can do A, B or C...."

There was a lot of that in Arizona.

Plus my mother is a bit of a drama queen but she always claimed that the docs let her mother die.

Le Lee - ok, now we are getting somewhere. You own more than one business, are located in Wisconsin. You are sleep deprived due to running your enterprises 24/7, as you ever-so-hiply put it.

You are a fractional supporter of capitalism, but really, really want to pay more taxes.

You are still afraid to tell us the name of your store, ostensibly, due to fear of hillbillies, as you call white people.

I think your fear is based on other things - unreported income, underpayment of withholding on your employees, bad bookkeeping, not providing health insurance for your employees - something along those lines. You are not honest because you cannot be - you know that you are guilty of various crimes, including hate speech, and probably much more serious ones. It's a wonder you can sleep at night, being such a hypocrite. Oh right, you don't sleep - you are always on the job.

Re your grandmother. Sorry to hear that. I have to say I have always heard good things [from Canadians I know] about the Canadian system but I'm sure there are some issues. However, I know of very few Canadians who want to exchange their system for ours. I think they might appreciate a system that is a combination of the two.

And so here we are. Why not have a system in the US which combines the two? I really don't see how a Universal health plan will lead to socialism/ communism and a complete collapse of private health care. In fact, Medicare [which is running out of money, true] has not hurt the medical profession. Doctors use it and bill the plan as they would any insurance plan. It is there for people who cannot afford regular plans. And I have seen it work well for people in my own family. But I know older folks who are rich enough that they don't need what Medicare offers. Fine. They can choose a different plan.

3) We need to subsidize the rest of the world who will not spend the money needed to develop their own drugs and methods. They don't have to create, test or produce them and they refuse to pay full price for them when they exist. We get stuck with the bill.

This is very similar to our role in stabilizing the world. If it needs done and it's hard or expensive, the U.S. is the only one who will do it. The rest of the world should be ashamed.

I don't know that much about Kafka although I am familiar with his his satires on bureaucracy, and I do know his anti-bureaucracy inspiration tends toward anarchism, but shouldn't that be Huxleyesque brave new world?

In addition to better health care out comes for our money, we also get fantastic jobs for a large number of people in our society who are creating wealth and wonderful drugs and therapies that save lives. Socialized care mostly will add bureaucrats, paper pushers, accountants, etc. Not wealth producing 21st century occupations.

I realize that all means nothing to liberals. Probably just reads like Bla bla bla to them.

Matt @ 5:48 The bottom line is to make health care affordable for everyone. I don't think that is a bad goal. The free market system has been unable to do that with health care - and so far as I can tell costs just keep sky rocketing.

What I find intriguing / disturbing is that some of the reasons the healthcare free market doesn't work as well is -- ta daa --GOVERNMENT INTERFERENCE.

The Whole Foods guy (interesting that they "get it" and figured out some thing that works for them) touches on things which I have found -- or tried to find which are NOT offered because of regulations.

I have looked for catastrophic coverage and find some plans with bigger deductibles... but they are pretty weak knee-d imitations and the savings weren't in line.

I pay for my doctor's visits. (Like you do when you get your car worked on.) Because my primary care doc knows I am "naked" (as he calls it) and that I actually do PAY cash, I think I get a little deal. (Just spent $110 this week.)

Mackey (Whole Foods guy) suggests that health insurance that individuals chose to or have to carry should get equal tax benefits, (since we're all into 'equality' on this thing).

Mackey says " Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable."

Amen to that. I can find companies who would cover cheaper, or more in line with what I need, but they don't operate in my state. I am all for states rights. But if the Feds want to do something useful, they might have the states think about allowing competition across state line.

Tort reform. Notice how that is apparently TOTALLY missing in this bill? Maybe John Edwards would have to give back his 26,000 sf home.

Mackey again " Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren't covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program."

Since it seems that leftists / liberals are cheapskates when it comes to charities (Bidens? Obamas before they came under public scrutiny? Even then, tightwads.) they may not believe it would work --- But why not try it before shafting everyone?

I participate in a voluntary cooperative medical expense program whereby I contibute monthly to someone who has medical expenses. If I need help (after a "deductible" is met) I would receive help.

Guess that's ole' Hillary's village concept in the flesh, huh. Only we didn't need the federal government to do it. And it works well.

So there are some large scale changes which could be made, and some other innovative options which could be pursued.

Given that TennCare and the Mass plan don't seem to have worked out well, and CA covers anyone who shows up on their doorstep (and look where they are), it would certainly seem that the people we send to Congress would be a heck of a lot more careful about what they are doing with our lives, our choices, our money.

And what they do they have done without doing the homework that WE are doing for them.

A garbage pail bill like this where they are throwing everything down the hole is just completely invasive and irresponsible. It is truly a power grab that goes way beyond making health care "affordable."

Ced, you are aware that np's and pa's can prescribe meds in the US too, aren't you? I'm not sure what "minor equipment" or surgical procedures you are talking about so I can't speak to that without looking it up.

madawaskan, does that mean that the women had no prenatal care until that point? That sounds awful.

My in-laws claim that military doctors and hospitals are awful, and if my mother-in-law is to be believed, her experiences have been truly terrible. Poor care leading to permanent problems.

More recently, my in-laws now have the insurance provided to government employees now, and she had to wait 3 weeks after her cancer diagnosis to see an oncologist to schedule her surgery. It wasn't some dastardly death panelist weighing the pros and cons of letting her die; it was just bureaucratic incompetence: lost paperwork, people talking past each other, people not returning phone calls, t's not crossed and i's not dotted, etc. She's going to be fine, fortunately, but if her cancer had been fast growing, it may have been a different story.

This is why I worry about government health care. I worry that the current proposals are a backdoor to single payer, and we would all have to go through this sort of thing. I would be much more reassured if it were taken slowly and openly. That it hasn't been is of great concern to me.

Kirby Olson If you look at the protests now I think you will agree it is the right calling the left [and Obama] Nazi's. Not the other way around.Also the NH town hall was not hand picked. Just how could they hand pick people? Based on looks? And if they based it on how people answered a questions then people could just lie and then get in to raise hell.The reason people were respectful is because people are generally respectful toward the POTUS and he was up on a stage with a bit of distance. Compare that to the Senators who are usually right there face to face with the town hall folks. Yes, there was theatrics involved but when isn't there with a POTUS? It's always theatical.

If you look at the protests now I think you will agree it is the right calling the left [and Obama] Nazi's. Not the other way around.Honey, Pelosi started the whole thing. People are responding to THAT. Plus, I saw one guy had an obama hitler mustache poster was id'd as a plant.

Also the NH town hall was not hand picked. Just how could they hand pick people? Based on looks? And if they based it on how people answered a questions then people could just lie and then get in to raise hell.

For not being handpicked, they sure did manage to get some little campaign contributers daughter to ask some sickening childlike "why are you so awesome and why doesn't everyone else realize it" question. Honestly, man, are you blind?

If you think the Canadian system is so great, you haven't been talking to enough people. (Where was the medivac helicopter at that ritzy resort that whatzherface had to be driven hours from for care??)

As Mark Steyn joked one day ... if this plan goes through all his friends in Ottowa will have to go to Guatamala for care istead of hopping over the border to New England.

Doctors often limit the number of Medicare patients they take because the reimbursements are so small. You should check out what the doctors are actually getting .... And consider that they have to run and pay an office, lab, insurance, etc.

The bureacracy of a Federal single pay system alone is withering to consider.